It's one of the dirty little secrets of holiday albums, and Alison Scott couldn't keep it under wraps.
"I think it was about 90 degrees the first day we went to work in the studio," the piano-plunking Twin Cities soul-pop songstress admitted of her new album, "A Soulful Christmas."
With several months leeway required for production and manufacturing, Scott and her band did what most artists do with their holiday records: They started working on it over the summer, a few months after Scott became a mom. The first song they tackled, in fact, was the last one on the record, "Oh Holy Night," the most sacred and December-y track on the album. As Scott said, "We dove right in."
"In the end, we just joked it off, and I think that just added to the fun of making the record," Scott said of the seasonal disorder.
"Holy Night" aside, Scott's holiday CD is indeed a festive one. Her guitarist and bandleader, Kevin Bowe — carrying on the great tradition of Jewish musicians creating Christmas tunes — wrote two playful songs, "When Santa Gets the Blues" and "Little Miss Christmas," the latter of which he sang. They had fun with their choice of oldies, too, starting with the "Charlie Brown Christmas" opener "Christmas Time Is Here" and including John Lennon's "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)"
The record also includes a funked-up spin-off of "Little Drummer Boy," redubbed "Funky Little Drummer" and featuring rapped interludes. "I was afraid people would think we were stomping all over one of the most beloved holiday tunes, but they seem to like it," said Scott, who had other apprehensions, too.
"I'm a total nut for Christmas, and people have been asking us to do a holiday album, but I resisted because there's sort of a stigma attached to them. There's a fine line between being festive and being a total cheeseball about Christmas. I think we got around that, though."
This year Scott upped her December itinerary from one or two holiday gigs in clubs to a series of shows in arts centers and small theaters around the state, with four left on her docket: Maplewood Performing Arts Theater on Saturday, Chanhassen Dinner Theater Dec. 27-28 and Anoka's LyricArts Main Stage Dec. 29. LyricArts also has veteran countryman Sherwin Linton's holiday show on Wednesday night, by the way (7 p.m., $21-$25).
